He preserved the blood first. Three large clay jars, sealed with a wax and enchantment combination that would maintain temperature and prevent degradation indefinitely, labelled and placed into his dimensional storage with the careful organization he brought to anything that was going into long-term holding. The heart next — whole, a significant mass, smelling of the specific mineral heat of something that had run hot for two centuries. The brain last, extracted by Shadow with precision that he directed, placed in its own sealed container.
He did not know yet what any of these were worth in specific terms. But he could feel the power still resonating from every part of the dragon. The scientific and medical uses from each part were limitless. He put his parallel minds to work to analyze the dragons parts and what they can be used for.
Then he looked at the rest of the dragon and realized that none of the three of them had any idea how to butcher something this large.
'Thomas,' Lyra said.
'Thomas,' he agreed, and opened the transit.
◆ ◆ ◆
Thomas arrived with their father ten minutes later, stepping out of the shadow transit with the specific expression of a man who had been told there was a dragon and had processed the information on the walk to the transit point and arrived with a plan already in progress.
Edric stepped out behind him and looked at the dragon for a long moment. He looked at Arthur, and at Lyra, and at Saya, and at Shadow still settled against Arthur's side. He looked at the six open wounds in the dragon where the earth spikes had been. He looked back at Arthur.
'You're all alright?' he asked.
'Yes,' Arthur said. 'Shadow took a hit to the flank but she is all healed up now.'
Thomas had already walked the full length of the body and was crouching at the shoulder joint looking at how best to begin butchering.
Lyra had already gone back to the farmhouse and returned with the book before anyone had started. Not her journal — the thick green-bound volume on monster biology she had pulled from the Calmere bookshop shelf three months ago.
'The book has a section on dragons,' she said, without looking up. 'It's not long but it's specific.'
'What does it say?' Arthur asked.
She read it. She summarized as she went, pulling the relevant pieces.
The scales: near impenetrable, magically conductive, and valuable for crafting into armour and shields. The bones: dense beyond any ordinary animal equivalent, and — she paused here, read more carefully —if ground to powder and processed correctly, they produced a compound that improved skeletal density and structural resilience permanently. The claws and horns were similar in composition to the scales but harder, often used for weapons and magic items. The skin beneath the scales was a separate material entirely — durable, flexible, fire-resistant, lighter than it looked and can be made into high-quality leather products.
The meat: she read this section slowly. 'It says dragon meat consumed fresh improves physical strength, constitution, and visual acuity in all known cases. In documented cases of regular consumption — which apparently means more than two meals — there are recorded instances of modest life extension.' She looked up. 'It says modest. Then it says the oldest recorded case was a hunter who ate dragon meat regularly for a decade and lived to one hundred and forty-three, which the author notes is not modest.'
Arthur couldn't resist smiling at the thought of his family becoming as long-lived as him. The weight of his extended lifespan due to his absorption ability still weighing on him.
She continued, 'Don't waste any of the blood! It says that fresh dragon blood has been known to be a miracle elixir - capable of healing and other miraculous feats when consumed.'
'That's great, I've already collected three barrels worth of its blood right after it died. It's in my dimensional storage so it will be fresh whenever we want to try some. What about the organs,' Arthur said.
She found the page. 'Heart — concentrated life energy, similar properties to the meat but more potent, best used in small amounts over time rather than consumed whole.' She turned a page. 'Brain.' She read this quietly for a moment. Then: 'Mental acuity. Clarity of thought. It says mages who have processed dragon brain correctly report significant improvements in magical perception and construct complexity.' She looked at Arthur over the book. 'It says that twice, in two different sections, with two different cited sources.'
Arthur thought about the other jars with the brain and heart in his dimensional storage. 'Good,' he said.
They quartered the dragon first — four sections, Shadow doing the heavy separation work while Thomas directed, which made it manageable to move into the basement where the real work could happen out of the cold. Once downstairs, in the good light, with the workspace properly arranged, they got to it properly.
Mom brought down some hot tea for everyone and started poking the dragon's face with apprehension.
Thomas directed the cuts while Shadow opened the scale seams with precision that Arthur guided from the anatomy knowledge the absorption had left him. Edric handled the larger sections with the competence of a man who had been butchering animals his entire life and was not going to be put off by scale or species. Saya removed scales from the skin for processing without being asked.
Lyra moved between the work and the book, calling out notes as they became relevant.
By the time they were done the basement had six distinct organized piles along the north wall: scales ranging in size from a few centimeters to a large book; bones sectioned and stacked; claws and horns bundled and tied; the carefully rolled skin folded flat; a pile of miscellaneous material Lyra and Arthur had wanted for further research and finally the meat, wrapped and packed - most going into dimensional storage and the rest into cold storage.
Arthur had taken everything that was not being stored in the basement and put it into his dimensional storage where time degradation halted — the organs already preserved in their jars, the bone sections designated for processing, the overflow of scale material they did not have immediate space for. Every part of a two-hundred-year-old dragon, accounted for and preserved.
Edric stood back and looked at what they had done. He looked at the piles. He looked at the cold storage. 'Good morning's work.'
Lyra got up and looked at the organized north wall for a moment with the expression of someone satisfied with a job that had been done without wasting anything.
What started as taking an interest in her brother's research out of boredom during the winter had turned into a true passion for Lyra.
'The bone processing,' she said. 'I want to help with that when you do it.'
'Sure, I could use your help too,' Arthur said.
Taking another look at her book she said, quietly: 'The book has a price note.'
'How much,' Arthur said.
'Per scale. For an intact dragon scale in good condition.' She found the page. 'It says the market rate varies by region but that a single palm-sized scale from a juvenile dragon — ' she paused, ' — fetches between three and eight gold crowns at a reputable dealer. The larger the scale, the more.'
The room was quiet for a moment.
They all looked at the scale piles.
The largest pile was taller than Edric. Hundreds of perfect dark green scales, each one the size of a large book, stacked and sorted by Saya into neat rows — the best ones from the back, flanks, and belly where the dragon had kept its heaviest armor. They caught the basement light and threw it back with the deep iridescent sheen of something that had been hardening for two centuries.
And that was just the large scales. The smaller piles beside them held the rest — the tail, limbs, neck, and face had been covered in tighter, finer scales ranging from fingernail-sized up to the size of a palm, and those had their own sorted stacks that between them nearly matched the main pile in volume.
Edric looked at the pile for a long moment. Then at Arthur. He said nothing.
'We don't sell much at once,' Arthur said. 'A scale or two at a time, different channels, spaced out. A merchant with ten dragon scales raises questions. A traveler who trades one and moves on is just someone with an interesting find.'
'Years of steady income,' Thomas said. 'If we're careful.'
'Only if we need to,' Arthur said. 'Materials like this don't come around twice. I'd rather keep most of it.'
He picked up a section of the rolled skin. Lighter than it looked. He bent it — no crease. Pressed his thumb in hard — it didn't give.
His father's boots had been worn through at the left toe for two seasons. His mother's coat had been mended at the same cuff three times.
'I want the skin,' he said. 'All of it. I'm having it made into leather.'
'For what,' Lyra said.
'Boots. Clothes. For everyone.'
She looked at the skin. Then at him.
'Near invincible boots and clothes,' she said.
'Yes.'
She wrote it down. 'Noting that under practical applications,' she said, 'because it absolutely is one.'
◆ ◆ ◆
Mira stood in the kitchen doorway looking at the dragon cuts on the preparation table.
'How much is there,' she said.
'Enough for the household several times over.'
She picked up one of the cuts, examined it, set it down. 'I can see mana rising out from these steaks.'
'Well they are dragon steaks.'
She looked at the cuts with the expression she had when she was thinking about cooking and nothing else. 'Low heat first, then high to finish. The muscle density will be unlike anything I've worked with.' She looked at Arthur. 'What does it taste like.'
'I read they are considered one of the finest and most expensive cuts of meat. This meal is likely worth more than our farm, so it is likely to be good.'
Clara stood and looked at Arthur. 'It's not fair. You took Tsuki. Kiiro could have helped.'
'By Kiiro you mean you.'
'Obviously.'
'Next time,' he said. 'First on the list.'
She weighed this for a moment. Then a loud: 'Hmmph,' combined her head turning away as she walked out with Kiiro at her heels
◆ ◆ ◆
The kitchen smell that reached the basement before dinner and was unlike anything the house had produced before. Arthur first, who noted it and set down his tools; Saya next, who lifted her head from the dummy work and stood very still; Clara, who had been in the basement for the last hour pretending to work on a project, who simply stood up.
They ate at the big table.
The steaks were dark and dense and seared at the edges and Mira had done something with herbs from the winter stores that cut through the mineral depth of the meat and produced a smell that sat over the table while she set the plates and that no one spoke over because speaking seemed like the wrong thing to be doing.
Edric cut the first piece. Chewed it. Set down his fork and looked at the ceiling for a moment in the way he looked at things that required him to consider carefully before he said anything about them.
'Delicious,' he said.
That was all he said for the first minute.
The table ate.
The feeling arrived differently for different people — for Arthur it came first as warmth, the specific warmth of something being processed by the body at a level below ordinary digestion, working through the muscle and the bone and the mana structure with the unhurried certainty of something that had been doing this for two hundred years and knew how bodies worked. It was not the rush of a direct absorption. It was slower and more total and when it settled it settled everywhere.
He felt stronger. Genuinely, measurably stronger, the baseline of his physical body shifted up in the way that the absorption had shifted his pool and the kind of thing that would not fade back down when the meal was over.
He looked at his father.
Edric was sitting with his fork held loosely, looking at the table with the expression of a man who was conducting a quiet internal assessment and was arriving at an interesting result. He was thirty-two years old and he looked it, had always looked it — the weathering of outdoor farm work was written into the specific lines of his face, the permanent callusing of his hands. He looked at his hands now, briefly, and back at his plate.
Mira had stopped eating and was sitting with both hands flat on the table and her eyes closed, which was a posture Arthur had never seen from her in twenty months of existence. When she opened her eyes they were bright in the way that eyes were bright when something was happening behind them.
'I feel,' she said carefully, 'very like im getting stronger. This meat is truly miraculous.'
Clara was looking at her own hands with the specific focused attention she brought to things she could feel happening. She opened her mouth to say something and then seemed to change her mind and just looked at her hands a moment longer and said: 'It's like the opposite of being tired.'
Lyra had her eyes open and was looking slightly upward and to the left in the way she looked when she was checking an internal state. 'My physical strength and health,' she said. 'It feels like its slowly improving. I can't imagine what will happen after eating this regulary.'
Maren had been quiet through the meal, which was not unusual for Maren. She was sitting beside Mira with her hands around her cup and the expression of someone who was experiencing something unexpected and was deciding what to make of it. She looked younger, which Arthur noted with the diagnostic precision he applied to physical changes in people he was responsible for — not dramatically younger, but the specific quality of recent strain in her face had eased to a degree that a month of good food alone would not have produced. She looked like she had slept a full winter.
She looked at Mira. Mira looked at her. Something passed between them that was the language they had developed over three months of shared kitchen work, which was not a verbal language and did not need to be.
Saya had eaten with the speed of a starved animal - already on her second steak and showing no signs of slowing down.
'Saya, you can slow down, there is plenty more just for you.' Mira said that after months of meals with the girl.
Clara was already reaching for the serving dish.
The table ate, and the fire in the hearth was warm, and outside the farmhouse the January snow was still coming down, and the Voss household sat in the specific good quality of an evening that had exceeded what anyone had expected when the day started, which was a quality that had been present in this house since before Arthur could remember and which he intended, with considerable determination, to keep intact for as long as possible.
He looked at his family.
He thought: this was a pretty good day.
Then he reached for more.